Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/566

552 and the subsequent closetings, with the continual growth of the number of distinguished English refugees at the Hague, satisfied the French envoy that a descent on England was certain and nigh at hand. Avaux not only warned Louis of the imminent danger, but he warned James by every successive mail from the Hague, through Barillon. Louis took the alarm. He dispatched Bonrepaux to London to arouse James to a due sense of his peril, and offered to join his fleet with an English one to prevent the passage of the Dutch armament. He held a powerful body of troops ready to march to the frontiers of Holland, and ordered Avaux to announce to the states-general that his master was fully cognisant of the warlike preparations of the stadt-holder; that he was quite aware of their destination, and that, as the king of England was his ally, he should consider the first act of hostility against James as a declaration of war against himself. He at the same time declared the cardinal Furstemberg and the chapter of Cologne under his protection. Simultaneously the same message was delivered to the Spanish governor of Flanders, and marshal d'Humieres was dispatched to take the command of the French army in that quarter.

This plain declaration fell like a thunderbolt into the midst of the states-general. There was the utmost evident confusion. A poor and embarrassed excuse was made, and a courier sent post haste to fetch William from Mindeu, where he was in secret negotiation with the elector of Brandenburg. If James took the alarm, and Louis, as was his intent, went heartily into the coalition to defeat the enterprise, it must become a most hazardous undertaking, even if it were at all feasible. But the folly of that most wrong-headed of the Stuarts again saved the prince of Orange, and removed the last difficulty out of the way of his enterprise. James would not believe a word of the warning. He would not believe that his own daughter would sanction an attempt at his dethronement. He would not believe that William's armament had any other object than the king of France himself. He highly resented the declaration of Louis that there was an alliance betwixt them, as calculated to alarm his own subjects, especially his protestant ones. He received Bonrepaux with cold hauteur in return for his offers of assistance; and Van Citters, the Dutch ambassador, with proportionate cordiality, who hastened on the part of the states to assure him that the French communications were sheer inventions. He gave orders that all the foreign ministers should be informed that there was no such league betwixt France and England as Louis pretended, for his own purposes.

In fact, James was living all this time in the midst of a set of traitors, who, even to his most confidential minister, Sunderland, had secretly gone over to William, and were putting him in possession of every daily thought, word, and intention of their master. Besides the seven that had signed, and of whom admiral Russell was already with William, the earl of Shrewsbury had fled to him, having mortgaged his estates and taken forty thousand pounds with him, and offered it to the prince. The two sons of the marquis of Winchester, lord Wiltshire, and a younger brother; Halifax's son, lord Eland; Danby's son, lord Dumblaine; lord Lorn, the son of the unfortunate earl of Argyll; lord Mordaunt, Gerard, earl of Macclesfield, and admiral Herbert were already with him. Herbert had been appointed admiral to the Dutch fleet, with a pension of six thousand pounds a year. Wildman, Carstairs, Ferguson, Hume, who had escaped from the Argyll and Monmouth expeditions, went there; and, whilst the sons of Halifax and Danby were with William, they themselves, though remaining in England with Devonshire, Lumley, and others, were sworn to rise in his favour the moment he landed. But the most unsuspected of the traitors at his own court were the lords Churchill and Sunderland. Churchill James had made almost everything that he was; on Sunderland he had heaped benefits without stint or measure. He had scraped money together by all possible means; and James did not merely connive at it, he favoured it. This meanest of creeping things was in the pay of France to the amount of six thousand pounds per annum; he had a pension from Ireland of five thousand pounds more; as president of the council he occupied the post of prime minister, and derived immense emoluments from fines, forfeitures, pardons, and the like. Rather than lose his place, he had openly professed Catholicism; but scarcely had he thus sold his soul for his beloved delf and power, when he saw as plainly as any one else that the ground was sliding from under the feet of his foolish master, and was overwhelmed with consternation. He hastened again to sell himself to William, on condition that his honours and property should be secure; and thus had James his very prime minister, his most confidential and trusted servant, at every turn drawing out all his plans and thoughts, and sending them to his intended invader. Sunderland's wife was the mistress of Sidney, who was at the Hague; and, through her, this most contemptible of men sent constantly his traitorous communications to her paramour, and so to William.

With such snakes in the grass about him, James was completely blinded to his danger. Churchill and Sunderland persuaded him that there was no danger from Holland, and inflamed his resentment at what they called the presumption of Louis. They were completely successful; and Sunderland, after the establishment of William in England, made a boast of this detestable conduct. Louis was so much disgusted by the haughty rejection of his warning, that he himself committed a gross political error. Instead of preventing the descent on England and the aggrandisement of his great opponent William—by far the most important measure for him—by directly attacking the frontiers of Holland, and keeping William engaged, in his vexation he abandoned the besotted James, and made an attack on the German empire. Dividing his army, one portion of it, under the marquis of Boufflers, seized Worms, Mentz, and Treves; a second, under Humieres, made itself master of Bonn; and a third, under the duke of Duras and marshal Vauban, took Philipsburg by storm. The greater part of the Rhine was at once in Louis's hands, and great was the triumph in Paris. But not the less was the exultation of William of Orange; for now, the French army removed, and the mind of Louis incensed against James, the way was wide open for him to England.

No time was now lost in preparing to depart. A memorial, professing to be addressed by the protestants of England to the states, but supposed to be drawn up by Burnet, was published, accompanied by two declarations in the name of William addressed to the people of England and Scotland.